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AND 

ITS CONSEQUENCES. 




BOSTON: 
AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION, 
21 Br ok field Street. 
1 8 5 4. 



1 



.5 6 



St«reotyped bj 
HOB ART & ROB BIN'S, 

NIW ENGLAND TYPE AND STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY, 
BOSTON. 



TO THE READER. 



You will find in this little book two ser- 
mons ; the first by Rev. Dr. Channing, the 
second by Rev. Dr. Dewey. They both 
relate to the same subject ; — perhaps the 
most solemn subject to which man can give 
his thoughts. 

In relation to it, as you are well aware, 
the Christian world has entertained a variety 
of opinions. Some divines have preached 
the doctrine of an outward, material cause 



IT 



TO THE READER. 



of suffering to follow wrong-doing; others 
have taught a retribution which flows from 
the laws of the soul itself. Some divines 
believe that the future agonies of the trans- 
gressor will be infinite in duration ; while to 
others it seems that such a statement pro- j 
vokes doubt, and tempts to a rejection of a 
sure faith in any coming retribution, and 
therefore they prefer to leave this subject 
where they think the Bible leaves it, affirm- 
ing that sin and suffering are linked together, 
— that the latter must be endured till the 
former is forsaken and loathed : and that 
we know not in what periods of duration 
! such transformations may be effected with 
those who have been hardened against all 
the gracious calls and hopes of this life. 
The two eminent men above named agree 



TO THE READER. V 

in maintaining the second view here discrim- 
inated. You are not asked to read their 
words, however, for any controversial pur- 
pose. You will at once see that these 
sermons were written with a far different 
design. In the presence of the fearful 
realities even of the milder views of retri- 
bution, controversy seems impossible. Too 
solemn and too awful is the subject for you 
to waste your time in disputation. Rather 
may you feel like taking this book with you 
to your chamber of retirement, and there 
pondering its lessons even unto prayer. 

More than twenty years ago, the writer 
of this heard the first of the following ser- 
mons preached in the college chapel, at 
Cambridge. Of the hundreds of young 
men then assembled, no one will ever forget 



VI 



TO THE READER. 



the lessons of that hour. May God give to 
the readers of this sermon impressions as 
solemn and admonitory as are still left on 
many minds, even after the lapse of so many 
years. 

H. A. M. 

Boston, July, 1854. 



THE EVIL OF SIN. 

B Y / 
/ 

REV. WILLIAM E. CHANNING, D. D. 



THE EVIL OF SIN. 



Proverbs 14 : 9. — " Tools make a mock at sin." 

My aim in this discourse is simple, and may be 
expressed in a few words. I wish to guard you 
against thinking lightly of sin. No folly is so 
monstrous, and yet our exposure to it is great. 
Breathing an atmosphere tainted with moral evil, 
seeing and hearing sin in our daily walks, we are 
in no small danger of overlooking its malignity. 
This malignity I would set before you with all 
plainness, believing that the effort which is needed 
to resist this enemy of our peace is to be called 
forth by fixing on it our frequent and serious atten- 
tion. 

I feel as if a difficulty lay at the very threshold 
of this discussion, which it is worth our while to 
remove. The word sin, I apprehend, is to many 
obscure, or not sufficiently plain. It is a word sel- 



10 



THE EVIL OE SIN. 



dom used in common life. It belongs to theology 
and the pulpit. By not a few people sin is sup- 
posed to be a property of our nature, born with us ; 
and we sometimes hear of the child as being sinful 
before it can have performed any action. From 
these and other causes the word gives to many 
confused notions. Sin, in its true sense, is the vio- 
lation of duty, and cannot, consequently, exist 
before conscience has begun to act, and before 
power to obey it is unfolded. To sin is to resist 
our sense of right, to oppose known obligation, to 
cherish feelings, or commit deeds, which we know 
to be wrong. It is to withhold from God the 
reverence, gratitude, and obedience, which our own 
consciences pronounce to be due to that great and 
good Being. It is to transgress those laws of 
equity, justice, candor, humanity, disinterestedness, 
which we all feel to belong and to answer to our 
various social relations. It is to yield ourselves 
to those appetites which we know to be the inferior 
principles of our nature, to give the body a mas- 
tery over the mind, to sacrifice the intellect and 
heart to the senses, to surrender ourselves to ease 
and indulgence, or to prefer outward accumulation 



THE EVIL OP SIN. 11 

and power to strength and peace of conscience, to 
progress towards perfection. Such is sin. It is 
voluntary wrong-doing. Any gratification injuri- 
ous to ourselves is sin. Any act injurious to our 
neighbors is sin. Indifference to our Creator is 
sin. The transgression of any command which 
this excellent Being and rightful Sovereign has 
given us, whether by conscience or revelation, is 
sin. So broad is this term. It is as extensive as 
duty. It is not some mysterious thing wrought 
into our souls at birth. It is not a theological 
subtilty. It is choosing and acting in opposition 
to our sense of right, to known obligation. 

Now, according to the Scriptures, there is noth- 
ing so evil, so deformed, so ruinous, as sin. All 
pain, poverty, contempt, affliction, ill success, are 
light, and not to be named with it. To do wrong 
is more pernicious than to incur all the calamities 
which nature or human malice can heap upon us. 
According to the Scriptures, I am not to fear those 
who would kill this body, and have nothing more 
that they can do. Such enemies are impotent com- 
pared with that sin which draws down the dis- 
pleasure of God, and draws after it misery and 



12 THE EVIL OE SIN. 

death to the soul. According to the Scriptures, I 
am to pluck out even a right eye, or cut off even a 
right arm, which would ensnare or seduce me into 
crime. The loss of the most important limbs and 
organs is nothing compared to the loss of inno- 
cence. Such, you know, is the whole strain of 
Scripture. Sin, violated duty, the evil of the heart, 
this is the only evil of which Scripture takes 
account. It was from this that Christ came to 
redeem us. It is to purify us from this stain, to 
set us free from this yoke, that a new and super- 
natural agency was added to God's other means of 
promoting human happiness. 

It is the design of these representations of Scrip- 
ture to lead us to connect with sin or wrong- doing 
the ideas of evil, wretchedness, and debasement, 
more strongly than with anything else ; and this 
deep, deliberate conviction of the wrong and evil 
done to ourselves by sin, is not simply a command 
of Christianity. It is not an arbitrary, positive 
precept, which rests solely on the word of the law- 
giver, and of which no account can be given but 
that he wills it. It is alike the dictate of natural 
and revealed religion, an injunction of conscience 



THE EVIL OF SIN. 13 

and reason, founded in our very souls, and con- 
firmed by constant experience. To regard sin, 
wrong-doing, as the greatest of evils, is God's com- 
mand, proclaimed from within and without, from 
heaven and earth ; and he who does not hear it has 
not learned the truth on which his whole happi- 
ness rests. This I propose to illustrate. 

1. If we look within, we find in our very nature 
a testimony to the doctrine that sin is the chief 
of evils ; a testimony which, however slighted or 
smothered, will be recognized, I think, by every 
one who hears me. To understand this truth bet- 
ter, it may be useful to inquire into and compare 
the different kinds of evil. Evil has various forms, 
but these may all be reduced to two great divis- 
ions, called by philosophers natural and moral. By 
the first is meant the pain of suffering which 
springs from outward condition and events, or 
from causes independent of the will. The latter, 
that is, moral evil, belongs to character and con- 
duct, and is commonly expressed by the words sin, 
vice, transgression of the rule of right. Now I 
say that there is no man, unless he be singularly 
hardened and an exception to his race, who, if 



14 THE EYIL OF SIN. 

these two classes or divisions of evil should be 
clearly and fully presented him in moments of calm 
and deliberate thinking, would not feel, through 
the very constitution of his mind, that sin or vice 
is worse and more to be dreaded than pain . I am wil- 
ling to take from among you the individual who has 
studied least the great questions of morality and 
religion , whose mind has grown up with least dis- 
cipline. If I place before such a hearer two exam- 
ples in strong contrast, one of a man gaining great 
property by an atrocious crime, and another expos- 
ing himself to great suffering through a resolute 
purpose of duty, will he not tell me at once, from 
a deep moral sentiment, which leaves not a doubt 
on his mind, that the last has chosen the better 
part, that he is more to be envied than the first 1 
On these great questions, What is the chief good ? 
and What the chief evil ? we are instructed by our 
own nature. An inward voice has told men, even 
in heathen countries, that excellence of character 
is the supreme good, and that baseness of soul and 
of action involves something worse than suffering. 
We have all of us, at some periods of life, had 
the same conviction ; and these have been the peri- 



THE EVIL OF SIN. 



15 



ods when the mind has been the healthiest, clear- 
est, least perturbed by passion. Is there any one 
here who does not feel that what the divine fac- 
ulty of conscience enjoins as right has stronger 
claims upon him than what is recommended as 
merely agreeable or advantageous ; that duty is 
something more sacred than interest or pleasure ; 
that virtue is a good of a higher order than grati- 
fication ; that crime is something worse than out- 
ward loss? What means the admiration with 
which we follow the conscientious and disinterested 
man, and which grows strong in proportion to his 
sacrifices to duty ? Is it not the testimony of our 
whole souls to the truth and greatness of the good 
he has chosen ? What means the feeling of abhor- 
rence, which we cannot repress if we would, tow- 
ards him who, by abusing confidence, trampling on 
weakness, or hardening himself against the appeals 
of mercy, has grown rich or great ? Do we think 
that such a man has made a good bargain in bar- 
tering principle for wealth ? Is prosperous fortune 
a balance for vice 1 In our deliberate moments, is 
there not a voice which pronounces his craft folly, 
and his success misery ? 



16 



THE EYIL OF SIN. 



And, to come nearer home, what conviction is it 
which springs up most spontaneously in our more 
reflecting moments, when we look back without 
passion on our own lives? Can vice stand that 
calm look ? Is there a single wrong act, which we 
would not then rejoice to expunge from the unal- 
terable records of our deeds 1 Do we ever congrat- 
ulate ourselves on having despised the inward mon- 
itor, or revolted against God ? To what portions 
of our history do we return most joyfully ? Are 
they those in which we gained the world and lost 
the soul, in which temptation mastered our princi- 
ples, which levity and sloth made a blank, or 
which a selfish and unprincipled activity made 
worse than a blank, in our existence ? Or are they 
those in which we suffered, but were true to con- 
science, in which we denied ourselves for duty, and 
sacrificed success through unwavering rectitude? 
In these moments of calm recollection, do not the 
very transgressions at which perhaps we once 
mocked, and which promised unmixed joy, recur 
to awaken shame and remorse 1 And do not shame 
and remorse involve a consciousness that we have 
sunk beneath our proper good 1 that our highest 



THE EYIL OF SIN. 17 

nature, what constitutes our true self, has been 
sacrificed to low interests and pursuits ? I make 
these appeals confidently. I think my questions 
can receive but one answer. Now, these convic- 
tions and emotions, with which we witness moral 
evil in others, or recollect it in ourselves ; these feel- 
ings towards guilt, which mere pain and suffering 
never excite, and which manifest themselves with 
more or less distinctness in all nations and all 
stages of society ; these inward attestations that sin, 
wrong-doing, is a peculiar evil, for which no out- 
ward good can give adequate compensation, — surely 
these deserve to be regarded as the voice of nature, 
the voice of God. They are accompanied with a 
peculiar consciousness of truth. They are felt to 
be our ornament and defence. Thus our nature 
teaches the doctrine of Christianity, that sin, or 
moral evil, ought of all evils to inspire most abhor- 
rence and fear. 

Our first argument has been drawn from senti- 
ment, from deep and almost instinctive feeling, 
from the hand writing of the Creator on the soul. 
Our next may be drawn from experience. We 
have said that even when sin or wrong-doing is 



2 



18 THE EYIL OF SIN. 

prosperous, and duty brings suffering, we feel that 
the suffering is a less evil than sin. I now add, in 
the second place, that sin, though it sometimes 
prospers, and never meets its full retribution on 
earth, yet, on the whole, produces more present 
suffering than all things else ; so that experience 
warns us against sin or wrong-doing as the chief 
evil we can incur. "Whence come the sorest dis- 
eases and acutest bodily pains? Come they not 
from the lusts warring in our members, from crim- 
inal excess ? What chiefly generates poverty and 
its worst sufferings ? Is it not to evils of charac- 
ter, to the want of self-denying virtue, that we must 
ascribe chiefly the evils of our outward condition ? 
The pages of history, how is it that they are so 
dark and sad? Is it not that they are stained 
with crime? If we penetrate into private life, 
what spreads most misery through our homes ? Is 
it sickness, or selfishness? Is it want of outward 
comforts, or want of inward discipline, of the spirit 
of love ? "What more do we need to bring back 
Eden's happiness, than Eden's sinlessness? How 
light a burden would be life's necessary ills, were 
they not aided by the crushing weight of our own 



THE EVIL OE SIN. 19 

and others' faults and crimes ! How fast would 
human woe vanish, were human selfishness, sens- 
uality, injustice, pride, impiety, to yield to the 
pure and benign influences of Christian truth ! 
How many of us know that the sharpest pains we 
have ever suffered have been the wounds of pride, 
the paroxysms of passion, the stings of remorse ; 
and, where this is not the case, who of us, if he 
were to know his own soul, would not see that the 
daily restlessness of life, the wearing uneasiness of 
the mind, which, as a whole, brings more suffering 
than acute pains, is altogether the result of undis- 
ciplined passions, of neglect or disobedience of God? 
Our discontents and anxieties have their origin in 
moral evil. The lines of suffering on almost every 
human countenance have been deepened, if not 
traced there, by unfaithfulness to conscience, by 
departures from duty. To do wrong is the surest 
way to bring suffering ; no wrong deed ever failed 
to bring it. Those sins which, are followed by no 
palpable pain are yet terribly avenged even in this 
life. They abridge our capacity of happiness, im- 
pair our relish for innocent pleasure, and increase 
our sensibility to suffering. They spoil us of the 



20 THE EVIL OF SIN. 

armor of a pure conscience, and of trust in God, 
without which we are naked amidst hosts of foes, 
and are vulnerable by all the changes of life. Thus, 
to do wrong is to inflict the surest injury on our 
own peace. No enemy can do us equal harm with 
what we do ourselves, whenever or however we 
violate any moral or religious obligation. 

I have time but for one more view of moral evil, 
or sin, showing that it is truly the greatest evil. 
It is this. The miseries of disobedience to con- 
science and God are not exhausted in this life. Sin 
deserves, calls for, and will bring down, future 
greater misery. This Christianity teaches, and 
this nature teaches. Retribution is not a new 
doctrine brought by Christ into the world. Though 
darkened and corrupted, it was spread everywhere 
before he came. It carried alarm to rude nations, 
which nothing on earth could terrify. It mixed 
with all the false religions of antiquity, and it finds 
a response now in every mind not perverted by 
sophistry. That we shall carry with us into the 
future world our present minds, and that a charac- 
ter, formed in opposition to our highest faculties 



THE EVIL OF SIN. 



21 



and to the will of God, will produce suffering in 
our future being, these are truths, in which reve- 
lation, reason, and conscience remarkably conspire. 

I know, indeed, that this doctrine is sometimes 
questioned. It is maintained by some among us 
that punishment is confined to the present state ; 
that, in changing worlds, we shall change our 
characters ; that moral evil is to be buried with 
the body in the grave. As this opinion spreads 
industriously, and as it tends to diminish the dread 
of sin, it deserves some notice. To my mind, a 
more irrational doctrine was never broached. In 
the first place, it contradicts all our experience of 
the nature and laws of the mind. There is nothing 
more striking in the mind than the connection of its 
successive states. Our present knowledge, thoughts, 
feelings, characters, are the results of former im- 
pressions, passions, and pursuits. We are this 
moment what the past has made us ; and to sup- 
pose that, at death, the influences of our whole 
past course are to cease on our minds, and that a 
character is to spring up altogether at war with 
what has preceded it, is to suppose the most im- 
portant law or principle of the mind to be violated, 



22 



THE EYIL OF SIX. 



is to destroy all analogy between the present and 
future, and to substitute for experience the wild- 
est dreams of fancy. In truth, such a sudden 
revolution in the character as is here supposed 
seems to destroy a man's identity. The individual 
thus transformed can hardly seem to himself or to 
others the same being. It is equivalent to the cre- 
ation of a new soul. 

Let me next ask, what fact can be adduced in 
proof or illustration of the power ascribed to death 
of changing and purifying the mind? What is 
death ? It is the dissolution of certain limbs and 
organs by which the soul now acts. But these, 
however closely connected with the mind, are en- 
tirely distinct from its powers, from thought and 
will, from conscience and affection. Why should 
the last grow pure from the dissolution of the first 1 
Why shall the mind put on a new character, by 
laying aside the gross instruments through which 
it now operates ? At death, the hands, the feet, 
the eye and the ear perish. But they often perish 
during life ; and does character change with them ? 
It is true that our animal appetites are weakened 
and sometimes destroyed by the decay of the bod- 



THE EVIL OF SIN. 23 

ily organs on which they depend. But our deeper 
principles of action, and the moral complexion of 
the mind, are not therefore reversed. It often hap- 
pens that the sensualist, broken down by disease, 
which excess has induced, comes to loathe the lux- 
uries to which he was once enslaved ; but do his 
selfishness, his low habits of thought, his insensi- 
bility to God, decline and perish with his animal 
desires 1 Lop off the criminal's hands ; does the 
disposition to do mischief vanish with them? 
When the feet mortify, do we see a corresponding 
mortification of the will to go astray ] The loss of 
sight or hearing is a partial death ; but is a single 
vice plucked from the mind, or one of its strong 
passions palsied, by this destruction of its chief 
corporeal instruments 1 

Again, the idea that by dying, or changing 
worlds, a man may be made better or virtuous, 
shows an ignorance of the nature of moral good- 
ness or virtue. This belongs to free beings ; it sup- 
poses moral liberty. A man cannot be made virtu- 
ous, as an instrument may be put in tune, by a 
foreign hand, by an outward force. Virtue is that 
to which the man himself contributes. It is the 



24 THE EVIL OE SIN. 

fruit of exertion. It supposes conquest of tempta- 
tion. It cannot be given from abroad to one who 
has wasted life, or steeped himself in crime. To 
suppose moral goodness breathed from abroad into 
the guilty mind, just as health may be imparted to 
a sick body, is to overlook the distinction between 
corporeal and intellectual natures, and to degrade 
a free being into a machine. 

I will only add, that to suppose no connection to 
exist between the present and the future character, 
is to take away the use of the present state. Why 
are we placed in a state of discipline, exposed to 
temptation, encompassed with suffering, if, without 
discipline, and by a sovereign act of omnipotence, 
we are all of us, be our present characters what 
they may, soon and suddenly to be made perfect in 
virtue, and perfect in happiness 1 

Let us not listen for a moment to a doctrine so 
irrational as that our present characters do not fol- 
low us into a future world. If we are to live again, 
let us settle it as a sure fact, that we shall carry 
with us our present minds, such as we now make 
them ; that we shall reap good or ill according to 
their improvement or corruption ; and, of conse- 



THE EVIL OP SIN. 



25 



quence, that every act which affects character 
will reach in its influence beyond the grave, and 
have a bearing on our future weal or woe. We 
are now framing our future lot. He who does a 
bad deed says, more strongly than words can utter, 
" I cast away a portion of future good ; I resolve 
on future pain." 

I proceed now to an important and solemn 
remark, in illustration of the evil of sin. It is 
plainly implied in Scripture that we shall suffer 
much more from sin, evil tempers, irreligion, in 
the future world, than we suffer here. This is one 
main distinction between the two states. In the 
present world sin does indeed bring with it many 
pains, but not full or exact retribution, and some- 
times it seems crowned with prosperity ; and the 
cause of this is obvious. The present world is 
a state for the formation of character. It is meant 
to be a state of trial, where we are to act freely, to 
have opportunities of wrong as well as right action, 
and to become virtuous amidst temptation. Now 
such a purpose requires that sin, or wrong-doing, 
should not regularly and infallibly produce its full 
and immediate punishment. For suppose, my 



26 THE EVIL OF SIN. 

hearers, that, at the very instant of a bad purpose 
or a bad deed, a sore and awful penalty were un- 
failingly to light upon you ; would this be consist- 
ent with trial ; would you have moral freedom ; 
would you not live under compulsion? Who 
would do wrong, if judgment were to come like 
lightning after every evil deed 1 In such a world, 
fear would suspend our liberty, and supersede con- 
science. Accordingly sin, though, as we have seen, 
it produces great misery, is still left to compass 
many of its objects, often to prosper, often to be 
gain. Vice, bad as it is, has often many pleas- 
ures in its train. The worst men partake, equally 
with the good, the light of the sun, the rain, the 
harvest, the accommodations and improvements of 
civilized life, and sometimes accumulate more 
largely outward goods. And thus sin has its pleas- 
ures, and escapes many of its natural and proper 
fruits. We live in a world where, if we please, 
we may forget ourselves, may delude ourselves, 
may intoxicate our minds with false hopes, and 
may find, for a time, a deceitful joy in an evil 
course. In this respect the future will differ from 
the present world. After death, character will 



THE EVIL OF SIN. 



27 



produce its full effect. According to the Scrip- 
tures, the color of our future existence will be 
wholly determined by the habits and principles 
which we carry into it. The circumstances which, 
in this life, prevent vice, sin, wrong-doicg, from 
inflicting pain, will not operate hereafter. There 
the evil mind will be exposed to its own terrible 
agency, and nothing, nothing will interfere between 
the transgressor and his own awakened conscience. 
I ask you to pause, and weigh this distinction 
between the present and future. In the present 
life, we have, as I have said, the means of escap- 
ing, amusing, and forgetting ourselves. Once, in 
the course of every daily revolution of the sun, we 
all of us find refuge, and many a long refuge, in 
sleep ; and he who has lived without God, and in 
violation of his duty, hears not, for hours, a whis- 
per of the monitor within. But sleep is a function 
of our present animal frame, and let not the trans- 
gressor anticipate this boon in the world of retri- 
bution before him. It may be, and he has reason 
to fear, that, in that state, repose will not weigh 
down his eyelids ; that conscience will not slumber 
there ; that, night and day, the same reproaching 



28 THE EVIL OE SIX. 

voice is to cry within ; that unrepented sin will 
fasten, with unrelaxing grasp, on the ever- waking 
soul. What an immense change in condition would 
the removal of this single alleviation of suffering 
produce ! 

Again, in the present state, how many pleasant 
sights, scenes, voices, motions, draw us from our- 
selves ! and he who has done wrong, how easily 
may he forget it, perhaps mock at it, under the 
bright light of this sun, on this fair earth, at the 
table of luxury, and amidst cheerful associates ! In 
the state of retribution, he who has abused the 
present state will find no such means of escaping 
the wages- of sin. The precise mode in which such 
a man is to exist hereafter, I know not. But I 
know that it will offer nothing to amuse him, 
to dissipate thought, to turn him away from him- 
self ; nothing to which he can fly for refuge from 
the inward penalties of transgression. 

In the present life, I have said, the outward cre- 
ation, by its interesting objects, draws the evil man 
from himself. It seems to me probable that, in the 
future, the whole creation will, through sin, be 
turned into a source of suffering, and will perpet- 



THE EYIL OF SIN. 29 

ually throw back the evil mind on its own trans- 
gressions. I can briefly state the reflections which 
lead to this anticipation. The Scriptures strongly 
imply, if not positively teach, that, in the future 
life, we shall exist in connection with some mate- 
rial frame ; and the doctrine is sustained by rea- 
son ; for it can hardly be thought that, in a creation 
which is marked by gradual change and progress, 
we should make at once the mighty transition from 
our present state into a purely spiritual or unem- 
bodied existence. Now in the present state we 
find that the mind has an immense power over the 
body, and, when diseased, often communicates dis- 
ease to its sympathizing companion. I believe 
that, in the future state, the mind will have this 
power of conforming its outward frame to itself, 
incomparably more than here. We must never 
forget that, in that world, mind or character is to 
exert an all-powerful sway ; and, accordingly, it is 
rational to believe that the corrupt and deformed 
mind, which wants moral goodness, or a spirit of 
concord with God and with the universe, will cre- 
ate for itself, as its fit dwelling, a deformed body, 
which will also want concord or harmony with all 



: 30 THE EVIL OF SIN. 

things around it. Suppose this to exist, and the 
whole creation which now amuses may become an 
j instrument of suffering, fixing the soul with a more 
harrowing consciousness on itself. You know that 
even now, in consequence of certain derangements 
of the nervous system, the beautiful light gives 
acute pain, and sounds which once delighted us 
become shrill and distressing. How often this ex- 
cessive irritableness of the body has its origin in 
moral disorders, perhaps few of us suspect. I 
apprehend, indeed, that we should be all amazed, 
were we to learn to what extent the body is contin- 
ually incapacitated for enjoyment, and made sus- 
ceptible of suffering, by sins of the heart and life. 
That delicate part of our organization, on which 
sensibility, pain, and pleasure depend, is, I believe, 
peculiarly alive to the touch of moral evil. How 
easily, then, may the mind hereafter frame the 
future body according to itself, so that, in propor- 
tion to its vice, it will receive, through its organs 
and senses, impressions of gloom, which it will feel 
to be the natural productions of its own depravity, 
and which will, in this way, give a terrible energy 
to conscience ! For myself, I see no need of a local 



THE EVIL OE SIN. 



31 



hell for the sinner after death. When I reflect 
how, in the present world, a guilty mind has power 
to deform the countenance, to undermine health, 
to poison pleasure, to darken the fairest scenes of 
nature, to turn prosperity into a curse, I can easily 
understand how, in the world to come, sin, work- 
ing without obstruction according to its own nature, 
should spread the gloom of a dungeon over the 
whole creation, and, wherever it goes, should turn 
the universe into a hell. 

In these remarks, I presume not to be the proph- 
et of the future world. I only wish you to feel 
how terribly sin is hereafter to work its own mis- 
ery, and how false and dangerous it is to argue, 
from your present power of escaping its conse- 
quences, that you may escape them in the life to 
come. Let each of us be assured that, by abusing 
this world, we shall not earn a better. The Scrip- 
tures announce a state of more exact and rigorous 
retribution than the present. Let this truth sink 
into our hearts. It shows us, what I have aimed 
to establish, that to do wrong is to incur the great- 
est of calamities, that sin is the chief of evils. May 
I not say that nothing else deserves the name 1 No 



32 THE EYIL OF SIN. 

other evil will follow us beyond the grave. Pov- 
erty, disease, the world's scorn, the pain of be- 
reaved affection, — these cease at the grave. The 
purified spirit lays down there every burden. One, 
and only one, evil can be carried from this world 
to the next, and that is, the evil within us, moral 
evil, guilt, crime, ungoverned passion, the depraved 
mind, the memory of a wasted or ill-spent life, the 
character which has grown up under neglect of 
God's voice in the soul and in his word. This, 
this will go with us, to stamp itself on our future 
frames, to darken our future being, to separate us, 
like an impassable gulf, from our Creator and from 
pure and happy beings, to be as a consuming fire 
and an undying worm. 

I have spoken of the pains and penalties of moral 
evil, or of wrong-doing, in the world to come. 
How long they will endure, I know not. Whether 
they will issue in the reformation and happiness of 
the sufferer, or will terminate in the extinction of 
his conscious being, is a question on which Scrip- 
ture throws no clear light. Plausible arguments 
may be adduced in support of both these doctrines. 
On this and on other points revelation aims not to 



THE EYIL OE SIN. 33 

give precise information, but to fix in us a deep im- 
pression that great suffering awaits a disobedient, 
wasted, immoral, irreligious life. To fasten this 
impression, to make it a deliberate and practical 
conviction, is more needful than to ascertain the 
mode or duration of future suffering. May the 
views this day given lead us all to self-communion, 
and to new energy, watchfulness, and prayer, 
against our sins. May they teach us that to do 
wrong, to neglect or violate any known duty, is of 
all evils the most fearful. Let every act, or feel- 
ing, or motive, which bears the brand of guilt, seem 
to us more terrible than the worst calamities of 
life. Let us dread it more than the agonies of the 
most painful death. 



3 



THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION. 

BY / 

REV. ORVILLE f)EWEY, D. D. 



THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION. 



G-alatians 6 : 7. — " Be not deceived 5 God is not mocked : for 
whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap." 

I understand these words, my brethren, as lay- 
ing down, in some respects, a stricter law of retri- 
bution than is yet received, even by those who are 
considered as its strictest interpreters. There is 
much dispute about this law at the present day ; 
and there are many who are jealous, and very prop- 
erly jealous, of every encroachment upon its sal- 
utary principles. But even those who profess to 
hold the strictest faith on this subject, and who, in 
my judgment, do hold a faith concerning what 
they call the infinity of man's ill-desert, that is 
warranted neither by reason nor Scripture ; even 
they, nevertheless, do often present views of con- 
version and of God's mercy, and of the actual scene 
of retribution, which, in my apprehension, detract 



38 



THE LAW OE RETEIBUTION. 



from the wholesome severity of the rule by which 
we are to be judged. Their views may be strong 
enough, too strong ; and yet not strict enough, nor 
impressive enough. Tell a man that he deserves 
to suffer infinitely, and I am not sure that it will, 
by any means, come so near his conscience as to 
tell him that he deserves to endure some small but 
specific evil. Tell him that he deserves an infinity 
of suffering, and he may blindly assent to it ; it is 
a vast and vague something that presses upon his 
conscience, and has no edge nor point ; but, put a 
sword into the hand of conscience, and how might 
this easy assenter to the justice of infinite torments 
grow astonished and angry, if you were to tell him 
that he deserved to suffer but the amputation of a 
single finger ! Or tell the sinner that he shall suffer 
for his offences a thousand ages hence, and 
though it may be true, and will be true, if he 
goes on offending till that period, yet it will not 
come home to his heart with half so vivid an im- 
pression, or half so effectual a restraint, as to make 
him foresee the pain, the remorse and shame, that 
he will suffer the very next hour. Tell him, in 
fine, as it is common to do, — tell him of retribu- 



THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION. 



39 



tion in the gross, — and, however strong the lan- 
guage, he may listen to it with apathy ; he often 
does so ; but, if you could show him what sin is 
doing within him at every moment ; how every suc- 
cessive offence lays on another and another shade 
upon the brightness of the soul ; how every trans- 
gression, as if it held the very sword of justice, is 
cutting off, one by one, the fine and invisible fibres 
that bind the soul to happiness ; then, by all the 
love of happiness, such a man must be interested 
and concerned for himself. Or tell the bad man 
that he must be converted, or he cannot be happy 
hereafter, and you declare to him an impressive 
truth ; but how much would it add to the impres- 
sion if, instead of leaving him to suppose that bare 
conversion (in the popular sense of that term), 
that the brief work of an hour, would bring him to 
heaven, you should say to him, " You shall be just 
as happy hereafter as you are pure and upright, 
and no more ; just as happy as your character pre- 
pares you to be, and no more ; your moral, like 
your mental character, though it may take its date 
or impulse from a certain moment, is not formed 
in a moment ; your character, that is to say, the 



40 



THE LAW OE K 



ION. 



habit of your mind, is the result of many thoughts, 
and feelings, and efforts ; and these are bound to- 
gether by many natural and strong ties ; so that it 
is strictly true, and this is the great law of retri- 
bution, that all coming experience is to be affected 
by every present feeling ; that every future moment 
of being must answer for every present moment ; 
that one moment sacrificed to sin or lost to improve- 
ment is forever sacrificed and lost ; that one year's 
delay, or one hour's wilful delay, to enter the right 
path is to put you back so far in the everlasting 
pursuit of happiness ; and that every sin, ay, every 
sin of a good man, is thus to be answered for, 
though not according to the full measure of its ill- 
desert, yet according to a rule of unbending recti- 
tude and impartiality." This is undoubtedly the 
strict and solemn Law of Retribution ; but how 
much its strictness has really entered — I say not 
now into our hearts and lives ; I will take up that 
serious question in another season of meditation — 
but how much the strictness of the principle of ret- 
ribution has entered into our theories, our creeds, 
our speculations, is a matter that deserves atten- 
tion. 



THE LAW OE RETRIBUTION. 41 

It is worthy of remark, indeed, that there is no 
doctrine which is more universally received, and, at 
the same time, more universally evaded, than this 
very doctrine which we are considering. It is uni- 
versally received, because the very condition of 
human existence involves it ; because it is a matter 
of experience ; every after-period of life being affect- 
ed, and known to be affected, by the conduct of 
every earlier period ; manhood by youth, and age 
by manhood ; professional success by the prepara- 
tion for it ; domestic happiness by conjugal fidel- 
ity and parental care. It is thus seen that life is 
a tissue, into which the thread of this connection is 
everywhere interwoven. It is thus seen that the 
law of retribution presses upon every man, whether 
be thinks of it or not ; that it pursues him through 
all the courses of life with a step that never falters 
nor tires, and with an eye that never sleeps nor 
slumbers. The doctrine of a future retribution 
has been universally received, too, because it has 
been felt that in no other way could the impartiality 
of God's government be vindicated ; that, if the best 
and the worst men in the world, — - if the ruthless 
oppressor and his innocent victim ; if the proud and 



42 THE LAW OE RETRIBUTION. 

boasting injur er and the meek and patient sufferer 
are to go to the same reward, to the same appro- 
bation of the good and just God ; there is an end 
of all discrimination, of all moral government, and 
of all light upon the mysteries of Providence . It 
has been felt, moreover, that the character of the 
soul carries with it, and in its most intimate nature, 
the principles of retribution, and that it must work 
out weal or woe for its possessor. 

But this doctrine, so universally received, has 
been, I say, as universally evaded. The classic 
mythologies of paganism did, indeed, teach that 
there were infernal regions ; but few were doomed 
to them ; and for those few who, failing of the rites 
of sepulture, or of some other ceremonial qualifi- 
cation, were liable to that doom, an escape was 
provided by their wandering on the banks of the 
Styx a while, as preparatory to their entering Elys- 
ium. So, too, the creed of the Catholics, though 
it spoke of hell, had also its purgatory to soften 
the horrors of retribution. And now there are, as 
I think, among the body of Protestants, certain 
speculative, or rather may I say mechanical views 
of the future state, and of the preparation for it, 



THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION. 43 

and of the principles of mercy in its allotments, 
that tend to let Sown the strictness of that law 
which forever binds us to the retributive future. 

Is it not a question, let me barely ask in passing, 
whether this universal evasion does not show that 
the universal belief has been extravagant ; whether 
men have not believed too much to believe it strictly 
and specifically to its minutest point 1 It certainly 
is a very striking fact that, while the popular creed 
teaches that almost the whole living world is going 
down to everlasting torments, the popular sym- 
pathy interposes to save from that doom almost 
the whole dying world. 

But, not to dwell on this observation, I shall 
proceed now briefly to consider some of those mod- 
ern views which detract from the strictness of the 
law of retribution. 

1. And the first which I shall notice is the view 
of the actual scene of retribution, as consisting of 
two conditions, entirely opposite and altogether 
different. Mankind, according to this view, are 
divided into two distinct classes ; the one of which 
is to enjoy infinite happiness, and the other to suffer 
infinite misery. It is a far stronger case than 



44 THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION. 

would be made by the supposition that man's varied 
efforts to gain worldly good were to be rewarded 
by assigning to one portion of the race boundless 
wealth, and to the other absolute poverty ; for it is 
infinite happiness on the one hand, and not the 
bare destitution of it, but infinite misery, on the 
other. 

Let me observe, before I proceed further to point 
out what I consider to be the defect which attends 
this popular view of retribution, that the view 
itself is not warranted by Scripture. The Bible 
teaches us that virtue will be rewarded, and sin 
punished ; that the good shall receive good, and 
the evil shall receive evil ; and that is all that it 
teaches us. It unfolds to us this simple, and 
solemn, and purely spiritual issue, and nothing 
onore. 

All else is figurative ; and so the most learned 
interpreters have generally agreed to consider it. 
It is obvious that representations of what passes in 
the future world, taken from the present world, 
must be of this character. When heaven is rep- 
resented as a city, and hell as a deep abyss, and 
Christ is described as coming to judgment on a 



THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION. 45 

throne, with the state and splendor of an oriental 
monarch, and separating, in form and visibly sep- 
arating, the righteous from the wicked, we know 
that these representations are figurative descrip- 
tions of a single and simple fact ; and this fact is, 
— and this is the whole of the fact that is taught 
us, — that a distinction will be made between good 
men and bad men ; and that they will be rewarded 
or punished hereafter according to the character 
they have formed and sustained here. 

It is to be remembered, too, in appealing to the 
Scriptures, that there are other teachings in them 
than those which are figurative, and teachings 
which bind us far more to the letter. It is written 
that, whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also 
reap ; and that God will render unto every man 
according to his deeds ; that is, according to his char- 
acter, as by deeds is doubtless meant in this instance. 

But now, to return to the view already stated, I 
maintain that the boundless distinction which it 
makes in the state of the future life, is not render- 
ing unto men according to their deeds ; that is to 
say, according to their character. Because, of this 
character there are many diversities, and degrees, 



46 THE LAW OP RETRIBUTION. 

and shades. Men differ in virtue precisely as they 
differ in intelligence ; by just as many and imper- 
ceptible degrees. As many as are the diversities 
of moral education in the world, as numerous as 
are the shades of circumstance in life, as various as 
are the degrees of moral capacity and effort in vari- 
ous minds, so must the results differ. If character 
were formed by machinery, there might be but two 
samples. But if it is formed by voluntary agency, 
the results must be as diversified and complicated 
as the operations of that agency. And the fact 
which every man's observation must show him 
undoubtedly is, that virtue in men differs just as 
intelligence does ; differs, I repeat, by just as many 
and imperceptible degrees. But now suppose that 
men were to be rewarded for their intelligence 
hereafter. Would all the immense variety of cases 
be met by two totally different and opposite allot- 
ments ? Take the scale of character, and mark on 
it all the degrees of difference, and all the divisions 
of a degree. Now what point on the scale will you 
select at which to make the infinite difference of 
allotments 1 Select it where you will, and there 
will be the thousandth part of a degree above, 



THE LAW OE RETRIBUTION. 47 

rewarded with perfect happiness, and a thousandth 
part of a degree below doomed to perfect misery. 
Would this be right with regard to the intelli- 
gence or virtue of men ? 

We are misled on this subject by that loose and 
inaccurate division of mankind, which is common, 
into the two classes of " saints and sinners." We 
might as well say that all men are either strong or 
weak, wise or foolish, intellectual or sensual. So 
they are, in a general sense ; but not in a sense that 
excludes all discrimination. And the language of 
the Bible, when it speaks of the good and bad, of 
the righteous and wicked, is to be understood with 
the same reasonable discrimination, with the same 
reasonable qualification of its meaning, as when it 
speaks of the rich and poor. The truth is, the 
matter of fact is, that from the highest point of 
virtue to the lowest point of wickedness there are, 
I repeat, innumerable steps, and men are stand- 
ing upon all these steps ; they are actually 
found in all these gradations of character. Now 
to render to such beings according to their charac- 
ter is not to appoint to them two totally distinct 
and opposite allotments, but just as many allot- 



48 THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION. 

ments as there are shades of moral difference be- 
tween them. 

But does not the Bible speak of two distinct 
classes of men as amenable to the judgment, and 
of but two ; and does it not say, of the one class, 
" these shall go away into everlasting fire," and of 
the other, " but the righteous into life eternal " I 
Certainly it does. And so do we constantly say, 
that the good shall be happy and the bad shall be 
miserable in the coming world. But do we, or 
does the Bible, intend to speak without any dis- 
crimination ? Especially, can the omniscient scru- 
tiny and the unerring rule be supposed to overlook 
any, even the slightest differences and the most 
delicate shades of character 1 On the contrary, we 
are told that " one star differeth from another in 
glory ;" and we are told that there is a " lowest 
hell and we are led to admit that, in the allot- 
ments of retributive justice, the best among bad 
men, and the worst among good men, may come as 
near to each other in condition as they come in, 
character. 

I am not saying, let it be observed, that the dif- 
ference, even in this case, is unimportant ; still less 



THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION. 49 

that it is so in general. Nay, and the difference 
between the states of the very good man and of the 
very bad man may, indeed, be as great as any the- 
ory supposes ; it may be much greater, in fact, than 
any man's imagination conceives ; but this is not 
the only difference that is to be brought into the 
final account ; for there are many intermediate 
ranks between the best and the worst. I say, that 
the difference of allotment may, nay, and that it 
must be great. The truly good man, the devoted 
Christian, shall doubtless experience a happiness 
beyond his utmost expectation. The bad man, the 
self-indulgent, the self-ruined man, will doubtless 
find his doom severer than he had looked for. I 
say not what it may be. But this, at least, we 
may be sure of, that the consequences both of good 
and bad conduct will be more serious, will strike 
deeper, than we are likely, amidst the gross and 
dim perceptions of sense, to comprehend. 

But this is not the point which I am at present 
arguing. It is not the extent of the consequences ; 
but it is the strict and discriminating impartiality 
which shall measure out those affecting results ; it 
is the strict law by which every man shall reap the 



4 



50 THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION. 

fruits of that which he sows. And I say that the 
artificial, imaginative, and, as I think, unauthor- 
ized ideas which prevail with regard to a future 
life, let down the strictness of the law. 

Let me now illustrate this by a single supposi- 
tion. Suppose that you were to live in this world 
one thousand or ten thousand years ; and suppose, 
too, that you felt that every present moment was a 
probation for every future moment ; and that, in 
order to be happy, you must be pure ; that every 
fault, every wrong habit of life or feeling, would 
tend and would continue to make you unhappy, 
till it was faithfully and effectually corrected ; and 
corrected by yourself, not by the hand of death, not 
by the exchange of worlds. Suppose yourself to 
entertain the conviction that, if you plunged into 
self-indulgence and sin, diseases, and distempers, 
and woes would accumulate upon you, with no 
friendly interposition or rescue, no all-healing nos- 
trum, no medicine of sovereigu and miraculous 
efficacy to save ; that diseases, I say, and distem- 
pers, and woes would accumulate upon you, in 
dark and darkening forms, for a thousand years. 
Suppose that every evil passion, anger, or avarice, 



THE LAW OE RETRIBUTION. 51 



or envy, or selfishness in any of its forms, would, 
unless resisted and overcome, make you more and 
more miserable, for a thousand years. I say that 
such a prospect, limited as it is in comparison, 
would be more impressive and salutary, a more 
powerful restraint upon sin, a more powerful stim- 
ulus to improvement, than the prospect, as it is 
usually contemplated, of the retributions of eter- 
nity ! Are we then making all that we ought to 
make of the prospect of an eternal retribution? 
God's justice will be as strict there as it is here. 
And although bodily diseases may not accumulate 
upon us there, yet the diseases of the soul, if we 
take not heed to them, will accumulate upon us ; 
and he who has only one degree of purity, and ten 
degrees of sin in him, must not lay that nattering 
unction to his soul, that death will " wash out the 
long arrears of guilt." I know that this is a doc- 
trine of unbending strictness ; a doctrine, I had 
almost said, insufferably strict ; but I believe that 
it is altogether true. 

" But," some one may say, " if I am converted, 
— if I have repented of my sins, and believed on 



52 THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION . 

the Lord Jesus Christ, then I have the assurance, 
through God's mercy, of pardon and heaven." 

This statement embraces the other doctrinal eva- 
sion of the law of retribution which I proposed to 
consider. And I must venture to express the ap- 
prehension that, by those who answer thus to the 
strict and unaccommodating demand of inwrought 
purity, neither conversion, nor repentance, nor the 
mercy of God, are understood as they ought to be. 

A man says, " I am not to be judged by the law, 
but by the Gospel." But when he says that, let 
me tell him he should take care to know what he 
says, and whereof he affirms. The difference be- 
tween the Law and the Gospel, I believe, is much 
misapprehended in this respect. The Gospel is not 
a more easy, not a more lax rule to walk by, but 
only a more encouraging rule. The Law demands 
rectitude, and declares that the sinner deserves the 
miseries of a future life ; and there it stops, and of 
course it leaves the offender in despair. The Gos- 
pel comes in, and it did come in, with its teaching 
and prophetic sacrifices, even amidst the thunders 
of Sinai, saying, If thou wilt repent and believe, — 
if thou wilt embrace the faith and spirit of the all- 



THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION. 53 

humbling and all-redeeming religion, the way to 
happiness is still open. But does the Gospel any- 
thing more than open the way ? Does it make the 
way more easy, more indulgent, less self-denying ? 
Does it say, You need not be as good as the Law 
requires, and yet you shall be none the less happy 
for all that? Does it say, You need not do as 
well, and yet it shall be just as well with you? 
"Is Christ the minister of sin? God forbid!" 
Nay, be it remembered that the solemn declaration 
upon which we are this day meditating — " What- 
soever a man soweth that shall he also reap," — 
is recorded, not in the Law, but in the Gospel. 

" But, if I repent," it may be said, " am I not 
forgiven entirely? " If you repent entirely, you 
are forgiven entirely ; and not otherwise. What 
is repentance ? It is a change of mind. That, as 
every scholar knows, is the precise meaning of the 
original word, in the Scriptures, which is translated 
repentance. It is a change of mind. If, then, 
your repentance, your change of mind, is entire, 
your forgiveness, your happiness, is complete ; but 
on no other principle, and in no other proportion. 
Sorrow is only one of the indications of this repent- 

L 



54 THE LAW OF RETRIBUTIOX. 

ance or change of heart ; though it has unfortu- 
nately usurped, in common use, the whole mean- 
ing of the -word. Sorrow is not the only indica- 
tion of repentance ; for joy as truly springs from 
it. It is not, therefore, the bare fact that you are 
sorry, however sincerely and disinterestedly sorry, 
for your offences, that will deliver you from all the 
suffering which your sins and sinful habits must 
occasion. You may be sorry, for instance, and 
truly sorry, for your anger; yet, if the passion 
breaks out again, it must again give you pain ; and 
it must forever give you pain while it lives. You 
may grieve for your vices. Does that grief in- 
stantly stop the course of penalty? Will it 
instantly repair a shattered constitution? You 
may regret, in declining life, a state of mind pro- 
duced by too much devotion to worldly gain, the 
want of intellectual and moral resources and habits. 
Will the dearth and the desolation depart from 
your mind when that regret enters it ? "Will even 
the tears of repentance immediately cause fresh- 
ness and verdure to spring up in your path ? 

" But," it maybe said once more, " does not all 
depend on our being converted, or being born again ? 



THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION. 55 

And is not conversion, is not the new birth, the 
event of a moment 1 

I answer, with all the certainty of conviction 
that I am capable of, No ; it is not the event of a 
moment. That conversion which fits a soul for 
heaven is not the event of a moment. And, my 
brethren, I would not answer thus in a case where 
there is controversy, if I did not think it a matter 
of the most serious importance. Can anything be 
more fatal, — can any one of all loose doctrines be 
more loose, than to tell an offender who is going to 
the worst excesses in sin, that he may escape all 
the evil results, all the results of fifty, sixty, sev- 
enty years of self-indulgence, by one instant's expe- 
rience ] Can any one of us believe, dare we believe, 
that one moment's virtue can prepare us for the 
happiness of eternity 1 Can we believe this, espe- 
cially when we are, on every page of the Bible, 
commanded to watch, and pray, and strive, and 
labor, and, by patient continuance in well-doing, 
to seek for glory, and honor, and immortality ; and 
this as the express condition of obtaining eternal 
life or happiness 1 

No, Christians ! subjects of the Christian law ! 



56 THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION. 



No conversion, no repentance, no mercy of Heaven, 
will save you from the final operation of that sen- 
tence, or should save you from its warning now. 
" Be not deceived " — as if there was special dan- 
ger of being deceived here — " be not deceived ; 
God is not mocked ; for whatsoever a man soweth 
that shall he also reap ; he that soweth to the 
flesh shall of his flesh reap corruption ; but he that 
soweth to the spirit shall of the spirit reap life 
everlasting." 

It is a high, and strict, I had almost said a ter- 
rible discrimination. Yet let us bring it home to 
our hearts, although it be as a sword, to cut off 
some cherished sin. 0, this miserable and slavish 
folly of inquiring whether we have enough piety 
and virtue to save us ! Do men ever talk thus 
about the acquisition of riches or honors? Do 
they act as if all their solicitude was to ascertain 
and to stop at the point that would just save them 
from want, or secure them from disgrace ? " Enough 
virtue to save you," do you say? The very ques- 
tion shows that you have not enough. It shows 
that your views of salvation are yet technical and 
narrow, if not selfish. It shows that all your 



THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION. 57 

thoughts of retribution yet turn to solicitude and 
apprehension. 

The law of retribution is the law of God's good- 
ness. It addresses not only the fear of sin, but the 
love of improvement. Its grand requisition is that 
of progress. It urges us at every step to press for- 
ward. And however many steps we may have 
taken, it urges us to take still another and another, 
by the same pressing reason with which it urged 
us to take the first step. 

Yes, by the same pressing reason. Let him who 
thinks himself a good man, who thinks that he is 
converted and on the right side, and in the safe 
state, and who, nevertheless, from this false reason- 
ing and this presumptuous security, indulges in 
little sins, — irritability, covetousness, or worldly 
pride, — let him know that his doom shall be here- 
after, and is now, a kind of hell , compared with the 
blessedness in store for loftier virtue and holier 
piety ; and let him know too that, compared with 
that loftier standard, he has almost as much rea- 
son to tremble for himself as the poor sinner he 
looks down upon. For if woes are denounced 
against the impenitent sinner, so are woes de- j 



58 



THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION. 



nounced, in terms scarcely less awful, against the 
secure, lukewarm, negligent Christian. God is no 
respecter of persons nor of professions. It is writ- 
ten that he will " render to every man according to 
his deeds." It is written, too, that " whatsoever 
a man soweth, that shall he also reap." 

I repeat that language of fearful discrimination, 
" whatsoever a man soweth, that" — not something 
else — " that shall he also reap." That which you 
are doing, be it good or evil, be it grave or gay ; 
that which you are doing to-day and to-morrow, 
each thought, each feeling, each action, each event, 
every passing hour, every breathing moment, is 
contributing to form the character by which you 
are to be judged. Every particle of influence that 
goes to form that aggregate, your character, shall, 
in that future scrutiny, be sifted out from the mass, 
and shall fall particle by particle, with ages per- 
haps intervening — shall fall a distinct contribu- 
tion to the sum of your joys or your woes. Thus 
every idle word, every idle hour, shall give answer 
in the judgment. Think not, against the close- 
ness and severity of this inquisition, to put up any 
barrier of theological speculation. Conversion, 



THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION. 



59 



repentance, pardon — mean the j what they will — 
mean nothing that will save you from reaping, 
down to the very root and ground of good or evil, 
that which you have sowed. Think not to wrap 
that future world in any blackness of darkness, or 
any folding names ; as if for the imagination to be 
alarmed were all you had to feel or fear. Clearly, 
distinctly, shall the voice of accusation fall upon 
the guilty ear : as when, upon earth, the man of 
crime comes reluctantly forth from his hiding- 
place, and stands at the bar of his country's jus- 
tice, and the voices of his associates say, " Thou 
didst it ! " If there be any unchangeable, any 
adamantine fate in the universe, this is that fate ; 
that the future shall forever bring forth the fruits 
of the past. 

Take care, then, what thou sowest, as if thou 
wert taking care for eternity. That sowing, of 
which the Scripture speaketh, what is it? Yes- 
terday, perhaps, some evil temptation came upon 
you ; the opportunity of unrighteous gain, or of 
unhallowed indulgence, either in the sphere of bus- 
iness, or of pleasure, of society, or of solitude. If 
you yielded to it, then and there did you plant a 



60 THE LAW OF EETRIBUTIOX. 

seed of bitterness and sorrow. To-morrow, it may 
be, will threaten discovery ; and, agitated, alarmed, 
you will cover the sin, and bury it deeper in false- 
hood and hypocrisy. In the hiding bosom, in the 
fruitful soil of kindred vices,' that sin dies not, but 
thrives and grows ; and other and still other germs 
of evil gather around the accursed root, till, from 
that single seed of corruption, there springs up in 
the soul all that is horrible in habitual lying, knav- 
ery, or vice. Long before such a life comes to its 
close, its poor victim may have advanced within 
the very precincts of hell. Yes, the hell of debt, 
of disease, of ignominy, or of remorse, may gather 
its shadows around the steps of the transgressor, 
even on earth ; and yet these — if holy Scripture be 
unerring, and sure experience be prophetic — these 
are but the beginnings of sorrows. The evil deed 
may be done, alas ! in a moment, in one fatal 
moment ; but conscience never dies ; memory never 
sleeps ; guilt never can become innocence ; and 
remorse can never, never whisper peace. Pardon 
may come from heaven ; but self-forgiveness, when 
will it come 1 

Beware, then, thou who art tempted to evil — 



THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION. 61 

and every being before me is tempted to evil — be- 
ware what thou layest up for the future ; beware 
what thou layest up in the archives of eternity. 
Thou who wouldst wrong thy neighbor, beware ! 
lest the thought of that injured man, wounded and 
suffering from thine injury, be a pang which long 
years may not deprive of its bitterness. Thou who 
wouldst break into the house of innocence, and rifle 
it of its treasure, beware ! lest, when many years 
have passed over thee, the moan of its distress may 
not have died away from thine ear. Thou who 
wouldst build the desolate throne of ambition in 
thy heart, beware what thou art doing with all thy 
devices, and circumven tings, and selfish schemings ; 
lest desolation and loneliness be on thy path as it 
stretches into the long futurity. Thou, in fine, who 
art living a negligent and irreligious life, beware ! 
beware how thou livest ; for bound up with that life 
is the immutable principle of an endless retribu- 
tion ; bound up with that life are elements of God's 
creating which shall never spend their force ; which 
shall be unfolding and unfolding with the ages of 
eternity. Beware ! I say once more, and be not 
deceived. Be not deceived; God is not mocked. 




62 



THE LAW OP RETRIBUTION. 



God, who has formed thy nature thus to answer to 
the future, is not mocked. His law never can be 
abrogated ; his justice can never be eluded. Be- 
ware, then ; be forewarned ; since forever and for- 
ever will it be true that whatsoever a man soweth 
that shall he also reap ! 




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